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Lum the Mad
This page may be a Stub or not include some information. For a full article on the topic with citations, please see ' ' at Greyhawkonline.com. Baron Lum the Mad is a mighty Oeridian warlord whose power was at least partially due to his possession of the artifact known as the Infernal Machine. Lum was betrayed by his former general, Leuk-o, when the latter came to possess the artifact later known as the Mighty Servant of Leuk-o. Their final conflict left a large area wasted. A mysterious mist appeared, and Lum plunged through a dimensional rift to the plane of Limbo, where Lum waited for centuries, his connection to the machine leaving him unable to die. The machine was housed in the fortress Rifter, near Rauxes, until the city was destroyed in 586 CY, quite likely due to the machine's wild influence. Baron Lum lived a life obsessed with war and conquest, trained for it from boyhood, when he was rewarded for thinking and planning but punished for frivolous behavior. His first experience with the love of the opposite sex was twisted, painful, and empty. He grew to be a handsome man with rugged features marred with only a few scars. More than eight centuries ago he discovered the sword Druniazth, an artifact sacred to Tharizdun. He wielded it against Ur-Flannae sorcerers of the Thelwood, but lost it during the fray. He spent the rest of his time on Oerth searching for it, the effort slowly driving him insane. Years later, while exploring a castle his armies had conquered, he came across the Machine that would bear his name, a horseshoe-shaped nightmare of black metal, festooned with levers, dials, sockets, wires, and plugs. Through trial and error, he learned to manipulate it, learning more about its functioning than even the wisest sages have since then. If he was mad before, the blasphemous technology of the device drove him over the edge, but it also brought him great power. With his disciplined troops and his new powers, he carved out a mighty fiefdom. It is said that, with the machine, he brought no fewer than 50 new species of monsters into the world. He thought nothing of barrages of fire that annihilated large numbers of his own troops, so long as he carried the day. His reign was one of cruelty and horror, but it is credited in part for the impressive Oeridian successes in the days before their victories over the rival Suel and Flan were assured. Lum's reign approached its twilight when his formerly loyal subordinate, General Leuk-O, discovered the Mighty Servant artifact in the Belching Vortex that would become known by his name. Some believe the Mighty Servant and the Infernal Machine were created by the same otherworldly artificer, and the appearance of them both so close together was no coincidence. It is said the quasi-deity Krovis awoke from his sleep during this period to help bring Lum's tyranny to an end. With the power of the Mighty Servant, Leuk-O gathered a host that matched Lum's own. The two armies clashed many times before their final battle, when Lum disappeared. The fate of Leuk-O is unknown.